Last week Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy announced a tightly focused review of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 to reduce the cost burden on industry. I think this makes a lot of sense. A few months ago I spoke to someone working in the industry and was surprised to learn how crazy and outdated some of the regulations in this area are.
For example, if you’re importing a bunch of DVDs, you have to manually place a classification label on them, even if the classification label has already been printed on the packaging. Removing this compliance cost could save film and video game importers up to $2.4 million a year.
It’s important to note that while the review will look at timeframes around classification, with many feeling it takes too long, the classifications themselves are not up for review. Overall, this review looks like a pretty sensible thing to do. I’m interested in any comments…
How would this affect classification say if the rating was different on the packing from the country of origin to what it is here in New Zealand?
Matagari – as I understand it, the packaging would have to have the NZ classification label printed on it, not the classification label of the country of origin. Those in the industry I spoke to argued that it would be cheaper to ask the manufacturer to print the label directly rather than stick it on when it arrives in NZ.
In that case it sounds like an excellent idea.
Will be interesting to see what happens in this area
Whaleoil you know better than that. Clare
Does the Act involved sentencing ascepts..?
Could the review increase punishment for kiddie and animal pornographers..? That’d be good…
I hope so
Will Shane Jones be involved? He does seem to have some expertise there.
The industry needs to remember why the rating labels came about, they prevented paralle importing and piracy. The industry complains about 2.4 million in cost, well they if allowing photocopying (printing)of labels directly onto slicks then they run great risks of loosing 2.4 or more in lost sales. Photocoping has come a long way over the years and who could tell the difference. The industry will lose but so will the DVD stores and ultimately the public in poor quality product, you will see once again a spate of DVD stores popping up full of illegal product. Not to mention what type of banned product will be on the shelves containing goodness only knows what with a low rating photocopied slick. If it is not broken why fix it. Be careful be very careful.